The Bachmann Cookie for Republicans

In one ofhis finest routines, Chris Rock asks, incredulously, about people who demand credit for what you're supposed to do, "What do you want? A cookie?"

Thought about that this week as our old friend, the Girl With The Faraway Eyes, had a major public nutty and went after Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and a woman who's had enough trouble the last couple of years, what with being married to Anthony Weiner and all. La Bachmann got up and accused Abedin of being in league with the Muslim Brotherhood. She even got four of her colleagues to sign a letter to the State Department demanding an investigation into Bachmann's latest hallucination, and we'll get to Congresspeople Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp in a minute. Since then, John McCain has criticized her, and so have a number of other Republicans, including Ed Rollins, who, the last time I saw him in Iowa, was trying to make Bachmann the President of the United States. These people — especially McCain, whom Washington reporters would find reason to praise if the man ate puppies en brochette in the Senate dining room — are getting a lot of credit from folks for calling out a McCarthyite lunatic in their midst. To which I respond,

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What do you want, a cookie?

Calling out a McCarthyite lunatic in your party is what you're supposed to do, if you're at all invested in the national interest, and if you care at all for the job of keeping your political party from becoming the preserve of free-range crackpots. This is a task that the modern Republican Party — and the conservative "movement" that is its only real political energy — has failed at miserably. Michelle Bachmann should have been a marginal figure in the party for four years now, ever since she went on Hardball and called for an investigation into her "un-American" colleagues in the Congress. And even then, it would have been too late.

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She should have been written off as a crank in 2004, when she complained that The Lion King was gay propaganda, or in 2006, when she said that there were hundreds of Nobel Prize-winning scientists who believed in intelligent design, or in 2007, when she said that visiting Baghdad was like going to the Mall of America. But, no, there were no brave Republicans being revolted at sharing a party with her then, so she got to go on after her memorable Hardball fandango to accuse AmeriCorps of being an embryonic Hitler Youth, spread panic about the U.S. census, claim that Glenn Beck could solve the crisis over the national debt, and blame Jimmy Carter for the Swine Flu outbreak in the 1970s.

Where were all the brave boys then?

The problem they have with Michele Bachmann is not that she has one of the leakiest brain-pans in the garage. It's that she has an audience. She has a constituency in the party, and that's the party's other problem. It has proven utterly incapable of wringing the craziness out of the most vital parts of its base. In fact, the party's been so bad at it that Willard Romney has to drag his balls across broken glass just to appeal to the people who think Michele Bachmann was right about The Lion King.

(Also, Representatives Trent Franks, Thomas Rooney, Lynn Westmoreland, and — God help us — Louie Gohmert, who co-signed Bachmann's letter, how come nobody's landing on them? In fact, how come nobody's landing on Franks for his batshit views on ladyparts, or Gohmert for his batshit views on almost anything?)

So now, Bachmann steps on the toes of an influential woman who many Beltway natives know and like, and now it's time for McCain and the rest of them to notice that her hinges have been dangling all along? Lindsey Graham, who thought it was the height of democratic self-government to pursue the penis of Secretary Clinton's husband all over Washington now is horrified that Michele Bachmann floated to the ceiling again? Please.